Surrendered Birth Stories: Your Christian Birth Story Podcast

What did you listen to when you were in labor? What calmed you down? Or...what pumped you up?! Also...today we dive into a story of the ridiculousness of some OB's, but also the supernatural power of God! And lastly, inductions. So many of them are completely unnecessary, and so many of them can be prevented by proper birth education! All this and more on today's episode of Doula Diaries...

Can you praise God in the storm? Can you praise God when thing after thing after thing is going wrong, or not going how we wanted or thought it would go? Will you still praise Him? Will you trust Him? Be inspired in your faith as you listen to David and Tesia share the story of their first birth, which is honestly so much more than a birth story. It’s a story of their faith and God’s faithfulness,...

When you get to marry a chiropractor…you’re going to want to have a home birth! And that’s just what happened for Angeline when she married Mitch. Thankfully she didn’t have to convince him to get on board with a home birth like a lot of other wives out there, instead he was already made aware of the risks to mom and baby that come along with choosing a hospital birth, so much so that whenever any...

As a first-time mom, things were going very smoothly for Emily. After getting pregnant quickly, she wanted and planned and prepared for an unmedicated hospital birth. She took a great in-depth class, read books and hired a doula. Then during a prenatal, she met a doctor who liked to focus on the fact that C-Sections=Safety. Not something a mom planning a vaginal birth needs to be focusing on. Then...

Sometimes it takes several births to learn what God has been trying to teach you all along-that His ways are above our ways, that His plans are better than our plans, and that if we would just sink into that promise and let go of the reigns, that we could trust Him to know and do what’s best. Inara finally had this revelation after her fourth birth, after a long and complicated fertility journey,...

Have you ever been anxious about having a miscarriage once conceiving? What about the results of an ultrasound that said something other than what you expected to hear? Have you ever been anxious approaching labor, unsure how you were going to get through it? And postpartum-what happens when your hormones are all over the place, it’s nighttime, you’re alone, and awake AGAIN with a crying newborn w...

At 18 years old, before you’re ready to start a family, you’re told that you have cancer and that you’ll have a very hard time getting pregnant one day so you should just plan on doing IVF. Then, you find out that your test results got mixed up with somebody else's and that none of those things are true! Would you be able to fully trust the medical establishment after that? At 36 weeks into h...

What would it be like to hold your baby girl in your arms for the first time after 6+ years of struggling with infertility? Nothing short of a miracle! While Morgan and her husband were so incredibly grateful for God’s gift of their daughter, there were still some less than desirable events that occurred during and shortly after her birth that you'll have to hear to believe! Thankfully, the L...

Most first-time moms who are planning a hospital birth arrive at the hospital too early, and some of them even get sent home, which can be incredibly defeating as a laboring woman wanting so badly to meet her baby. Thankfully, Emily made some really good choices during her pregnancy to prioritize childbirth education and hire a birth doula so she wouldn’t be one of those women. She arrived in acti...

When you’ve already had 3 babies and 2 home births, you plan to have your next baby at home as well. But what do you do when your water unexpectedly breaks and there’s thick meconium in it? You have a decision to make. Do you decide to stay at home where you prefer and had planned to birth with the small risk of meconium aspiration, or do you decide to go to your least desirable location, the hosp...

This episode is dedicated to my husband, Chris Heeter. He's legitimately the GOAT (and he also taught me what the GOAT meant)! He turned 40 this weekend and I wanted to take the time to celebrate HIM! So this episode is all about how amazing of a husband he is through pregnancy, labor, birth, postpartum, breastfeeding and fatherhood in general. This episode could have easily been 40 hours lon...

How do you know you’re pregnant without taking a pregnancy test? How about God simply tells you that you are. That’s the kind of trust and faith that Kayla had with the Lord from the start of her pregnancy, and it would carry her throughout the entire 9 months, from a subchorionic hemorrhage to a last minute change in her birth plan and location, He would carry her. Your perspective on your birth...

Sometimes all it takes is one person’s recommendation and you taking it to change your perspective on everything. That’s what happened to Amelia when she read Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth. So she went on to hire a doula and plan a natural childbirth, but unfortunately, her care providers would bully her into an induction, and one that lasted three days. Between a nasty tooth abscess and root cana...

When Kathleen was pregnant for the second time, she was understandably anxious about the impending delivery, but this time, per her therapist’s recommendation, decided to hire a doula and went to a different hospital to deliver, and her journey was redeemed in every way. Postpartum became challenging though, not because of her newborn, but because of her toddler who was recently discovered to be o...

When you get sent home from the hospital during your first labor because you're only 1.5cm dilated and told you’re in early labor, it can be quite confusing to know when to come back. Poor Kathleen ended up laboring all alone, all night long, thinking she was just in early labor, then shows up to the hospital the next morning, begging for an epidural, only to find out she was actually fully d...

Today we'll dive into three more birth stories from my time as a doula. I'll walk you through what it was like for me to support these moms during their labors. First up is the story of the very first birth I ever attended as a doula in training, and the old school doctor whose routines I found absurd. Next, a long labor of a long gestation pregnancy that could have easily ended in a C-S...

When you're wanting a more holistic birth but decide to go to the hospital with an OB care team, things may not turn out how you envisioned. So for your second birth you hire hospital midwives, thinking that will be better, but then realize they’re not that much better than the OB’s. But then in the midst of your labor, you accidentally have your baby on the side of the road, just you and you...

When you’ve only ever given birth outside of the hospital and with midwives…what would it be like to have to birth in the hospital with high risk OB’s? In the state of California, where Breanna lives, midwives are not permitted to deliver twins outside of the hospital setting, and must work alongside an OB. So when Breanna found out she was having twins, she realized she’d be having a different ki...

After having her first two babies in Tennessee, where home birth was more affordable, Lycie and her husband had since moved out to northern California where midwifery was not only way more expensive, but the midwives were also not in line with her faith in Jesus. This led her to feeling obligated to plan a hospital birth, something she never dreamed of doing! But this time around she was committed...

When you grow up with a midwife as your mother, and you and your siblings were all born at home, planning a home birth for your first doesn’t seem strange at all. And it wasn’t for Lycie and her husband. While it was long, all was going well until the midwife realized how badly she had torn, and felt better about sending her to the hospital for her repair. That’s where the trauma started, the mome...

So you just had a home birth...what do you do next?  If it isn't obvious already, home birth is starkly and vastly different than a hospital or birth center birth. But is it any different immediately following the birth? In today's topical episode, Kayla discusses the following topics regarding home birth: - What to do when the birth is over - The legality of home birth (Is home birth le...

The twists and turns that can take place in our lives as God leads us from one season to another are astounding. From leaving religious cults, and trying to find healing through other churches that then turn around and treat you similarly, even though they’re supposed to be different, that in and of itself is incredibly difficult, especially as you’re trying to seek a deeper relationship with the...

How do you react when you never planned on having children of your own, never planned on having the title “mom” or “dad” but then the Lord changes those plans drastically…and little did you know you’d gain three daughters in a 24-hour period? The message here is that God is good, His plans are better than ours, and that we’re able to more fully realize His goodness and mercies when things don’t go...

What do you do when God is telling you one thing, but the doctors and medical system are telling you the opposite? This is a theme that came up for Amanda from before she got pregnant all the way through the births of her six children. The lesson? God’s word trumps man’s word every single time! Listen to this incredible story of fear conquered by faith as Amanda miraculously has her first vaginal...

When you have a 56 hour labor, that results in a transfer from home to hospital, you would assume all of the trauma from your birth experience is wrapped up in that, right? Not for Nikki, her trauma came about during early postpartum with everything from an IGT diagnosis, to an aspirating baby to an undiagnosed retained placenta that led to a hemorrhage at three and a half weeks postpartum. After...